How did this come about? At an Administrative Team meeting, the principal was discussing the changes in teaching styles that he has seen in numerous high school classrooms. The superintendent then posed that the principal ask the CFF coach to prepare a presentation for the next school board meeting. The presentation was planned based on "showing" what was happening in the classrooms not "discussing" what is happening in the classrooms. Initial Planning by CFF Coach and Principal:
Who? Principal, 1 teacher to demonstrate Skype, 1 teacher to demonstrate Google Docs, 1 student for each school board member, CFF coach, Tech Director What? Skype, Google Docs, Movie Maker When? School Board meeting - near the beginning of the agenda we were the third item on the agenda Where? School Board meeting location Why? To market your position and the sustainability How long? 15 - 20 minute goal - ours was 27 minutes long from principal's introduction until the end of the video Presentation:
Principal introduced the transformation seen in the classrooms; used George Jetson idea of video conferencing as a way to make the connection with the school board members. Introduced the Skype presenter.
Skype presentation - find a teacher who will make a connection with someone outside of the school or another person inside the school during the school board meeting; connect and have two students posed with questions for the Skype guest. We only had one student pose a question because guest expanded on the question. The question we used was "What do you believe is the most pressing need in your community today?" Our guest was a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the Air Force who resides in Washington, DC and works as an ROTC instructor in one of the local schools
Google Docs presentation - find a teacher and one student for each school board member to work on a Google document; student sat with board member and worked on answering the question "How has the new technology enhanced your learning experience?" Students were given approximately 1 minute to answer the question with a one sentence response. After the student answered the question, the board members were invited to participate by answering "How could Google Docs be used to increase collaboration among board members?"
Video (used Moviemaker) - (a) the beginning was 17 PowerPoint slides saved as TIFF files of the screen casts of a Google Trip focusing in on the school with a recorded voice of one of the teachers saying "Unchattered waters, a path not yet determined, where will we go?" (screen shots were used for this due to the cost of the Google upgrade to use a Google Trip video in Moviemaker, the last screen shot of the Google Trip had a picture of the school on the slide as well as the school name, Classrooms for the Future Transformation, and December 2007 - Present; (b) next slide included a quote slide (Do not go where the path may lead, to instead where there is no path and lead a trail. -Ralph Waldo Emerson); playing in the background of the slide was a clip from a song about leaving a trail by Carlos Jones and the PLUS band; (c) next slide was a wordle.net document created with 21st century words; in the background of the slide were teachers' voices recorded with 21st century words (facilitating, transforming, adapting, engaging, differentiating, learning, redesigning, collaborating, etc.- the Cohort 1 & 2 coaches used the terms last year for the Flip the Switch presentation); (d) next section was an interview with 1 teacher (allowed teacher to discuss change in classroom/students/teaching style since the laptops/Activboards have arrived); (e) next slide was a picture of kids with students voices in the background (inspiring, creating, exploring, innovating, learning, imagineering, collaborating - the Cohort 1 & 2 coaches used the terms last year for the Flip the Switch presentation); (f) interview of 5 students (allowed students to start talking about the technology and change since the laptops/Activboards have arrived); (g) statistics from teacher and student CFF survey from December 2007 - May 2008; (h) repeated first slide with a clip from the same song playing in the background. All information was placed in Moviemaker.
Question and answer time
Pre-Planning Details:
Teachers - select two teachers for presentation
Students - invite the teachers and students into the classroom where the presentation will take place and complete at least one run of the procedure and access the file on Google Docs; familiarize the teachers and students with the equipment they will be using; teacher shares Google Docs file with the students PRIOR to the night of the presentation; be sure document is in the student's Google account
Classroom - select a location that is close to the location where the School Board meeting will take place; be sure select a room that is equipped with CFF laptops, interactive board and set up so that the student can sit next to the board member so both can work together
Have a presentation made up with the Google Docs files just in case the network fails
Have another classroom, preferably with desktop computers, ready to go in case there are laptop issues
Back up plan - burn the movie to a cd/dvd in case you cannot access the movie file on the network
Night of the School Board Meeting:
Name tags for students
Name tents for assigned School Board members and students
Students arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the School Board meeting is set to begin
Log on to at least one computer for each School Board member/student group; log onto at least ten more computers just in case there are problems
Make the Skype connection with the guest at least 20 minutes prior to the start of the presentation
Be sure the students know who the School Board is that they are assigned to
The students sit at the School Board meeting until the presentation time
Administrators and community members are invited to the presentation area
Students escort the School Board member to the classroom
The principal begin the presentation with opening remarks and introduce the teacher who will be using Skype
The Skype teacher introduce the Skype contact and allow the contact to tell about himself/herself
A student(s) pose a question to the Skype contact
Teacher thanks the Skype contact
Principal thanks the Skype contact
Principal introduces the teacher using Google Docs
Google Docs teacher presents a short Google Docs presentation on what, how, why and benefits of using Google Docs in the classroom; the document is already shared with the students prior to the presentation
Teacher invited students/board members to respond to the prompt; gave approximately 2 minutes
Principal introduced the CFF Coach and the movie presentation was shown
Question and answer session
Principal thanked the students, teachers and coach for their participation
Fort LeBoeuf
How did this come about? At an Administrative Team meeting, the principal was discussing the changes in teaching styles that he has seen in numerous high school classrooms. The superintendent then posed that the principal ask the CFF coach to prepare a presentation for the next school board meeting. The presentation was planned based on "showing" what was happening in the classrooms not "discussing" what is happening in the classrooms.Initial Planning by CFF Coach and Principal:
Who? Principal, 1 teacher to demonstrate Skype, 1 teacher to demonstrate Google Docs, 1 student for each school board member, CFF coach, Tech Director
What? Skype, Google Docs, Movie Maker
When? School Board meeting - near the beginning of the agenda we were the third item on the agenda
Where? School Board meeting location
Why? To market your position and the sustainability
How long? 15 - 20 minute goal - ours was 27 minutes long from principal's introduction until the end of the video
Presentation:
Pre-Planning Details:
Night of the School Board Meeting: